


A Picture of His Face

by DoreyG



Category: The Sting (1973)
Genre: Community: homebrewbingo, Johnny Hooker is an absurdly attractive man, M/M, Post coital, Slight cuddling, Well fucked
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-20
Updated: 2012-08-20
Packaged: 2017-11-12 13:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/491709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoreyG/pseuds/DoreyG
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The kid pretty much <i>radiates</i> gorgeous with his floppy blonde hair, seemingly innocent eyes and bright smile that could rival the sun even on a <i>good</i> day. You look up the definition of gorgeous in the dictionary and you get Johnny, plain and simple. You con a boatload of diamonds, and you end up returning them because they’re simple unable to match Johnny’s baby blues. You spend hours studying the lines of his face, trying to capture every single perfect detail for ever and ever…</p>
<p>And, as everybody with half a brain has guessed, you can’t. Because he’s <i>so</i> damn gorgeous that it’d take a million years to absorb every single part of him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Picture of His Face

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Well fucked" square of my homebrew_Bingo (and I should probably post the card somewhere now, um). Title is a slightly altered version of a Scott Joplin song, because it seemed fairly appropriate. There's also a fair bit of focus on how gorgeous Johnny is in the film, BECAUSE HE REALLY WAS AHEM.

Johnny Hooker is gorgeous.

Well, yeah, that’s pretty damn _obvious_. The kid pretty much _radiates_ gorgeous with his floppy blonde hair, seemingly innocent eyes and bright smile that could rival the sun even on a _good_ day. You look up the definition of gorgeous in the dictionary and you get Johnny, plain and simple. You con a boatload of diamonds, and you end up returning them because they’re simple unable to match Johnny’s baby blues. You spend hours studying the lines of his face, trying to capture every single perfect detail for ever and ever…

And, as everybody with half a brain has guessed, you can’t. Because he’s _so_ damn gorgeous that it’d take a million years to absorb every single part of him.

He’s gorgeous in the morning: half past six, the both of them awake far too early for some brilliant grift. The dawn sun falls on his golden hair, making it something soft and almost angelic. His long fingers slowly button the crisp white shirt up over his chest as he represses sleepy giggles, fighting against the picture of respectability even as he becomes it.

He’s gorgeous in the afternoon: half one, just after lunch, and on the job. A sheen of sweat clings to him, making him fan himself with the nearest slightly crumpled paper. A charming smile spreads across his lips, mainly for the mark but making all who aren’t blind or dumb or _both_ pause in doorways and on streets and across roads and simply _gawp_.

He’s gorgeous at night: half nine, having seen the mark kindly home, and happily tipsy from the hotel bar. His skin warm, gloriously soft as he slings an ever so casual arm around his shoulders. The look in his eyes adoring, something absolutely captivating as he halts by his door and _beams_ that ever so secret smile.

But…

He’s most gorgeous, _most_ gorgeous, after all that. In the silent hours between night and morning, as he flops wearily back against the pillows and lets out a happy little sigh. So, _so_ gorgeous that he can only watch for a fond second: Take in the blonde hair falling into those eyes, the sated smile, the languid stretch of Johnny’s limbs as he somehow tilts further back into the pillows and lets that ever so soft sigh turn into an ever so happy hum…

And then strike a match, light a cigarette, savour the first blissful puff and follow – down into the mattress, their bare arms and bare thighs brushing as he gets himself settled, “Johnny?”

“…Yeah?” The kid is quite obviously trying to catch his breath – he has to hide a smile, choke down _cackles_ , before he can dare continue.

“Just wanted to see if you could remember your name, that’s all,” he takes another deep and satisfying puff, looks over Johnny’s sprawling and gleaming body with a certain sense of _pride_ , “and maybe a few other things: how old are you?”

“…Twenty-nine?” Those dazed eyes blink for a second, he keeps looking, “thirty soon, I _think_.”

“You may well be right,” he offers mildly, blows a ring out in the air just to watch Johnny grin at it, “what month were you born in twenty-nine-but- _almost_ -thirty years ago, then?”

“…June?”

“July.”

“July!” Johnny tears his eyes, _narrowly_ he’s pleased to see, from yet another smoke ring – fixes them on the ceiling instead and lets out another ever so low sigh, “I was close, though.”

“Indeed you were,” he grins himself, resists the urge to just lean over and steal a kiss (he really doesn’t want his beautiful Johnny to explode _just_ yet), “and what day in July, the _most_ June-like of months, were you born _on_ twenty-nine-but- _almost_ -thirty years ago?”

“… _Henry_.”

“Sorry, sorry – that was unfair,” he chuckles, muses proudly on how Johnny learned _exactly_ that voice from Billie (though, obviously, when _she_ uses it she manages to sound an awful lot more terrifying and possibly like she’s about to eviscerate you with the nearest piece of glass) “…Let’s go with something easier: what was your mother’s name?”

There’s a long, silent pause.

“Johnny?”

“It’s also unfair to ask a man about his mother in bed,” the kid tries (very, _very_ hard) for prim, ends up faintly desperate instead, “honestly, what the heck am I supposed to do after that?”

“We’ve technically finished being _in_ bed, kid, now we’re just _on_ bed,” he simply keeps grinning, most certainly laughing to himself. Considers blowing another smoke ring, but decides on a rare show of _restraint_ , “and telling me her name would be a good start.”

There’s another _long_ , _silent_ pause.

“Johnny?”

“Oh God.”

“… _Johnny_?”

“Oh _God_ ,” Johnny gives him a fully despairing look, or as close to a fully despairing look as possible when his mind is still largely floating out in the ether, and _thunks_ his head down again, “you conned my brain away while we were _in_ bed. I can’t remember a thing, a single damned _thing_.”

He stares for a long moment. A step away from the _long_ , _silent_ pauses – but still a fairly significant period of time.

…He starts to _laugh_.

“What?”

_Keeps_ laughing, low and rumbling as he finishes his cigarette and carefully puts it out in the ashtray by the bed. He can’t exactly _help_ it – the sleepy note of dismay in Johnny’s voice is just _far_ too sweet to ignore, or deny, or take like an apparently reasonable adult who _has_ actually heard funnier things in his life.

“ _What_?” Even as the kid tries to sound annoyed at it, and falls so far short that he might as well be throwing all doors open and yelling ‘Laughing party right here!’ at the _top_ of his voice, “Henry!”

“You keep saying that today,” he snorts himself to silence, makes the mistake of glancing at Johnny’s face and _immediately_ starts right back up again, “but – ah - _sorry_. That was – damn - _also_ unfair. I should try you on – holy _God_ in heaven – more recent things, huh?”

Johnny simply remains silent for a long moment. He gets the impression that the kid’s trying to pout, as he snorts himself to a halt _again_ , but his lips are far too slick to manage even a tiny one “…Huh.”

“Thought so,” he nods, _finally_ in control of himself… As long he avoids looking at Johnny, possibly for the rest of their lives, “what’s your opinion on our current con?”

“…Our current con?”

“Yes, Johnny, the one that we’re doing right now,” he says patiently, also narrowly avoiding the urge to press his fingers against the kid’s gleaming collarbone and trail _down_ “…Well, sort of ‘right now.’ Within the day, at least. The fortune teller fraud, remember?”

Johnny, to his credit, does _try_ to think without the painful distraction of skin sliding against skin. His forehead wrinkles, his mouth shifts into a firm line, he starts to tap his fingers against the mattress like _that’s_ going to suddenly sprout the answer to the profound mystery of life “…I think so.”

“Mr. Moore, a gambler down on his luck and desperate enough to believe in any mumbo jumbo thrown at him, is our man,” he continues, still patiently, and avoids that _pressing_ urge yet again, “my hotel room, that one that I never actually _use_ , is the location of the sting. We’re gonna fleece this guy out of at least two hundred and fifty bucks, maybe more if I can patter fast enough.”

Johnny grumbles wordlessly at that, looks like he simply wants to throw a sweaty arm over his face and go to sleep. It’s somewhat endearing.

“…And if you can get your head out of the clouds by tomorrow.”

“My heads not in the clouds, it’s down in the gutter where it belongs,” Johnny grumbles again, a touch louder this time - _so_ loud that he can’t help but be impressed “…He’s the guy that believes he’s cursed by some witch, right?”

_Very_ impressed, to tell the absolute truth and nothing but, “yup, some kind of voodoo thing that a dame landed on him the last time he was in Texas.”

“Texas?”

“Usually go for Florida, or somewhere around that area, but he had something _about_ Texas,” he raises his eyebrows significantly, shrugs casually, adopts his very _best_ grin, “I think it was the cows, or the bulls, or the steaks and the troubles with the lower end that they can cause when you’re wooing certain pretty young things who could do far better.”

That, at least, gets a snort from Johnny… A yawning, grumbling, sleepy snort. But a snort nonetheless, “and we’re definitely doing it in your hotel room, yeah?”

“Well,” he arches his eyebrow, looks as amused as possible despite knowing _very_ well that Johnny is probably too sleepy to see a single thing, “unless his mother calls to lecture him into restraint, _yes_. _This_ one is hardly suitable, after all. How am I, the majestic fortune teller extraordinaire, supposed to explain my assistant sprawling naked in my bed?”

“You never know,” Johnny mumbles, sounding a little bit like a guy that’s been sprawling in the grave for a few years, “lots of other extraordinarily majestic fortune tellers have their assistants in bed on a regular basis.”

“True, but most of their assistants have _breasts_ ,” he can only snort, slide a little closer to Johnny and keep resisting that temptation to touch, “besides: my room is smaller, more intimate. The perfect place for a slightly shady fortune teller to set up his table, receive his grand visitor and work his extremely profound magic for a small sum of cash.”

“Mm.”

“Mm?”

“ _Mm_ ,” the temptation to touch gets very hard (no pun intended), as Johnny closes his eyes briefly and lets out an ever so sleepy moan, “a small sum of cash adding up to around two hundred and fifty bucks?”

“That’s the plan.”

“And hopefully more?”

“That’s the _developed_ plan,” he grins a little, almost goes to straighten his lapels before remembering that he’d only end up groping his own bare chest, “the base rate is two hundred and fifty, we’ve already agreed on that. But he’s definitely the type to take a disgusted sort of pity on a person if they babble enough about the starving life of any decent nomad.”

Johnny seems to consider that for a second. To his credit, yet again, he even tries to struggle through the sleepiness “…Smooth.”

“I thought so.”

“Very smooth,” the kid blinks for a second, he can practically hear the adorable whir of cogs recovering from a very recent spillage, “what amount is he, ah, likely to take pity up to, then?”

“I’m not sure just yet,” he pretends to make a face, willing to try and fool Johnny into thinking that he’s not the only guy four steps behind here, “maybe up to a thousand, if we’re lucky and highly immoral? More likely to be around the eight hundred mark, though. I think that that’s the most the guy can sensibly afford.”

“Sensibly?”

“You know: if he still wants to live in a place grander than a cardboard box, eat on a regular basis and drink from a container smaller than a slight dip in the road.”

“Ah.”

“ _Ah_.”

Johnny’s eyelashes blink against his cheek one last time. End up staying there, making him look truly angelic and sleepy and out of it in a way that’s so very _sweet_ to anybody with a sane pair of eyes. He can’t help watching for a second, contemplating, _dwelling_ over in that ever fond way.

“…Johnny?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s a piece of work, isn’t he?”

“I suppose,” another yawn, a slightly softer one this time as if Johnny is actually _trying_ (and failing, it has to be said) to stay awake, “a bit weird, certainly. What with the steak thing. And the fortune teller thing. And the mother thing. And his insistence on only betting on red things because it reminds him of his grandmother’s apron when he was a kid.”

“Yeah.”

“…Yeah,” _Another_ soft, sleepy, faintly determined yawn.

“Dumb, too,” he continues happily when nothing more seems to be forthcoming from Johnny’s ever so sleepy mouth, “and not the endearing kind of dumb, I’m afraid to say – the priggish, narrow kind that could lose a million in two and a half seconds and then blame everybody else in the joint for the loss.”

Johnny just lets out another sleepy yawn, obviously struggling to keep his eyes open by now. Lapses sideways until that soft cheek is resting against his shoulder. Only winces a _little_ at the sliding sensation of skin against skin, “definitely.”

“And mean,” he carries on, staring down fondly at Johnny’s fair and already dozing head, “dead mean. With his piggy little eyes and greedy paws and habit of raising his nose and thinking that he’s _so_ much better than everybody else on the planet despite being on the verge of losing every single cent.”

Johnny snuffles vaguely into his shoulder, it’s either an agreement or something about a dance with an armadillo.

“And…”

Johnny _snores_.

A low, snorting, rumbling sound that immediately wakes the kid and sends him shooting up on the bed. A familiar sound, after all this time. A soothing sound, despite all wide eyes and clenched fingers. An _endearing_ sound.

“…Er, sorry,” that Johnny looks just as endearingly guilty about, with his wide eyes and shining mouth and faint wince and blush going all the way down to his toes, “the guy’s ugly too, yeah?”

He can only grin, still fondly, for a moment.

Actually lean in to press a kiss against Johnny’s still sweaty forehead, lower them both back to the bed with his arm carefully wrapped around Johnny’s shoulders and his face buried in Johnny’s golden hair, “Oh, kid. _Everybody_ is ugly compared to you.”

“Henry…?”

“Shhh,” he hushes, feels the sleepy brush of those pale eyelids against his cheek as Johnny obeys without a single question (Ah, and isn’t _that_ a nice development after everything that went down and all the daggers narrowly grazing over backs), “we’ll talk more about him in the morning, eh?”

There’s a brief pause, one more to do with sleepiness than protest.

“ _Eh_?”

“…Eh.”

He smiles to himself, wraps his arm just that bit tighter and ever so slowly closes his eyes.

And Johnny Hooker is always gorgeous. Always, _always_ gorgeous in all the very best ways… But he’s most gorgeous when he’s sleeping in his arms, pliable and well fucked and with one hand warmly rising and falling upon his chest.


End file.
